Overlord
Overlord is a strategy game that I am not terribly familiar with. For better details and goal information I would suggest reading FatRatKnight's previous submission.
This is a 3 frame improvement over the previous submission, these frames were saved by using a slightly different approach in the last battle. This submission is slower overall because 7 frames were lost to emulator differences (several early game screen transitions took longer, but FatRatKnight's previous submission did sync).
Game objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 2.4
- See goals in the previous submission
Improvements
- I didn't check the early game for improvements, but I'm guessing FatRatKnight's submission was pretty optimized.
- Similarly to the previous submission I wouldn't be surprised if frames could be shaved in the last fight still. I did improve it, but my testing was by no means exhaustive.
Thanks to:
- FatRatKnight for the original submission.
- The TASMania team
Screenshots:
271, 659, 2935, 14225, 15750
Memory: Judging
Memory: So from what I can tell, optimization is on point and entertainment is uh... well... not.
The unique thing in regards to this submission is the triviality rules we have in play. A previous submission of this game was rejected for triviality. It was considered too similar to what a human could achieve real time.
Years have passed since that submission. With the Zool submission, we realized some major flaws with how we were treating triviality up to this point. Ultimately... the degree of difference between what is possible real time and tool assisted is too subjective to really feasibly make judgments on. Additionally, I don't see much benefit out of limiting these types of runs. The fact that 3 frames can be saved clearly shows the game can be competitive, even if most the "action" is at the end. I think there's also plenty of value to optimizing a sort of strategy game that is largely controlled via menu, even if the strategy itself is a huge part of it.
At the time of the previous run the culture was a bit different. Despite having a Vault tier where supposedly runs that were less entertaining could go, the culture of the site still clung to subjective ideas of what TASes should be. Created ideas that they must be different enough from RTA or what have you. Yet we have plenty of other runs that resemble RTA very closely as well. I don't blame the previous judge for her decision in the slightest. I personally used to feel similarly until not that long ago. However, I now personally (not representative of other staff opinions) think we as a site need to move on this sort of subjective limiting of what we consider meaningful or otherwise. People have been banging on the door begging for us to open up... and more and more I just find myself agreeing with their reasons. It seems dishonest to me to claim that Vault is about limiting subjectivity when plenty of our rules, especially sorts of triviality rules, past or present are filled with it. Some still feel otherwise but I think one way or another we're moving towards broadening our focus.
There are still additional steps to take ultimately, but with the ones we have taken, I think our focus has broadened enough to accept this game and this run. Given that there is clearly room in this game for optimization, I think it passes our current triviality rules.
Accepting to Vault.
fsvgm777: Processing. Zinfidel is handling the encodes for this one.